One of the state’s biggest cheerleaders has a dream for the Jersey Super Bowl. She wants the teams to file in behind the shrill notes and rhythmic thumps of the Fife & Drum Corps, the official band of Trenton’s historic Old Barracks.

"I’ve already talked to Wayne and Grace about it," said Noreen Bodman, executive director of the Crossroads of the American Revolution National Heritage Area. "Can you imagine? We’ll send a message to the whole country, and will be a perfect way to start (New Jersey’s) 350th anniversary.

Noreen Bodman talks fast, to keep up with all those ideas that bounce around her head like atoms in a reactor, so let’s catch up with that statement.

Wayne is Wayne Hasenbalg, the head of the New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority, and Grace is Grace Hanlon, the executive director of the state’s Division of Travel & Tourism.

And the message Bodman wants to send is this: the state’s attitude toward its rich, but overlooked, Revolutionary War history is amping up and will no longer yield to states like Pennsylvania and Massachusetts.

Because while New England has the Patriots, we got the wins. Trenton. Princeton. Monmouth. Springfield.

And while Pennsylvania may have the legend of Valley Forge, we had the true coldest, hardest winter, in 1779-80, when the troops were at Jockey Hollow.

And we had Washington himself. The general spent 3½ years of the eight-year war here, leading those aforementioned victories in Trenton, Princeton and Monmouth, spying on the British from the Watchungs, and setting up major headquarters in Morristown (twice), Somerville, Wayne and Rockingham, where he wrote his farewell to arms.

He crossed the state in retreat, then back over the Delaware to begin the "Ten Crucial Days" that changed the war and the world. Did we mention that happened in New Jersey?

Still, it’s taken a long time for New Jersey to earn its rightful place. Yes, Morristown (the Ford Mansion and Jockey Hollow) was the country’s first "historical national park," made official in 1933. But it took the National Park Service another 73 years to christen our larger Revolutionary War footprint.

The Crossroads National Heritage Area was signed into legislation in 2006. It’s big — 2,155 square miles through 14 counties — because the war happened here.

For the first few years, Crossroads was forging its mission and laying down management groundwork. Now, says Bodman, they’re ready to make some noise. There’s a new logo, a new website, and new social media. New maps and signage are coming, so is a new app with a QR code that opens up digital, interactive maps. Much of this comes from the brain of Bodman’s program manager, Randi Ragsdale, a Texan who was educated in historic preservation at Rutgers.

But at the heart of all that is new, good old-fashioned storytelling.

"We need to connect the dots," said Bodman, a two-time state director of tourism.

"Tourists are tourists — they don’t stop at county lines, or even state lines," she said. "We’re beginning to collaborate and partner with other sites. If you bring people, that’s good for everybody."

There are 14 different storylines that tie the full New Jersey Revolutionary War history together. Some, like the maritime battles between American privateers and British warships, fall outside the official heritage area. Others, like the French and American march to Yorktown, cross state lines. But all put New Jersey’s role in perspective. As the geographic median of the colonies, and the place between New York and Philadelphia and the Hudson and Delaware, it was truly the crossroads of the Revolution.

"It was the crucial state," author Thomas J. Fleming, one of the country’s most celebrated historians, has said. "The war was fought and won here."

And as we celebrate Independence Day, that is something everyone in New Jersey can be proud of.